Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Record of Five Years' Exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre; In the Tierra Caliente of Tepic and Jalisco; and Among the Tarascos of Michoacan

To Morris K. Jesup, M.A., LL.D. President of the American Museum of Natural History of New York The Patron and Friend of Science This Work Is Respectfully Dedicated As a Token of Gratitude and Regard

In the course of my travels in Australia, and especially after my arrival at Upper Herbert River in Northern Queensland, I soon perceived that it would be impracticable for me to hunt for zoological specimens without first securing the assistance of the natives of the country. Thus it came about that for over a year I spent most of my time in the company of the cannibalistic blacks of that region, camping and hunting with them; and during this adventurous period I became so interested in these primitive people that the study of savage and barbaric races has since become my life’s work.
I first conceived the idea of an expedition to Mexico while on a visit to London in 1887. I had, of course, as we all have, heard of the wonderful cliff-dwellings in the Southwest of the United States, of entire villages built in caverns on steep mountain-sides, accessible in many cases only with the aid of ladders. Within the territory of the United States there were, to be sure, no survivors of the race that had once inhabited those dwellings. But the Spaniards, when first discovering and conquering that district, are said to have come upon dwellings then still occupied. Might there not, possibly, be descendants of the people yet in existence in the northwestern part of Mexico hitherto so little explored?
I made up my mind, then and there, that I would answer this question and that I would undertake an expedition into that part of the American continent. But my ideas were not realised until in 1890 I visited the United States on a lecturing tour. On broaching the subject of such an expedition to some representative men and women, I met with a surprisingly ready response; and interest in an undertaking of that kind being once aroused, the difficulties and obstacles in its way were soon overcome.